Broadview plans layoffs of nearly half its workers

With a payroll crisis looming, the Village of Broadview took drastic steps this week: It laid off almost half of its workforce.

The cuts, including a third of the police and firefighting forces, were necessary to offset a budget deficit that has been accumulating since 1999, officials said.

But residents in the 1.8-square-mile village, with middle-class homes and substantial industry, are outraged, accusing officials of destroying "the village in order to save it." They say they never saw it coming, and are shocked, fearful--and angry, most of all.

About 400 of the village's 8,264 residents squeezed into Village Hall on Monday night and questioned the loss of police officers while wondering about the future.

"It was hard [issuing layoff notices] to people I know and see every day," Mayor Henry Vicenik conceded before Monday's meeting. "I had to give a [layoff] letter to a patrolman who went to school with my son."

Vicenik, who has been on the Village Board since 1993 and mayor since 2002, blames the deficit on gradually rising expenses and stagnant revenues.

He said layoff notices effective June 1 were handed to 41 employees, including 10 of 34 police officers and 12 of 27 firefighters. The police chief said he'll likely have to disband the drug and gang tactical unit and the investigative division. He and other officials concede police response times will suffer.

"The village will be in jeopardy," said Robert Gordin, an eight-year veteran of the Police Department who received a layoff notice.

The layoffs were prompted by a $1.7 million revenue shortfall. Vicenik, speaking over hoots and hollers at Monday's meeting, said the village has annual expenses of about $12 million, annual revenue of about $10 million and about $2 million in cash on hand. The payroll could be met until September, he said, but would be exhausted later in the fall.

He said the village had pared a projected $2.7 million deficit by about $1 million when the fiscal year ended April 30 by not filling personnel vacancies and by deferring many expenses, such as new fire hoses and maintenance of firefighters' portable breathing equipment.

Vicenik and his financial advisers had hoped for a bailout through a home-rule status referendum question on the March ballot.

That designation would have allowed officials to impose sales and real estate tax increases to cover the deficit, Vicenik said, but the referendum question was voted down.

"We had a plan," he said. "We talked with the financial people about some interim financing, and we knew we could do a half-cent sales tax, a gas tax, a cigarette tax, hotel tax."

Residents on Monday suggested some other tough remedies. Judy Brown-Marino, who ran unsuccessfully for the Village Board last year, said officials should use a state law that allows them to ask the governor for appointment of a commission to oversee the village's finances.

Brown-Marino said she would consider filing a lawsuit in an effort to force the formation of such a commission if the board doesn't request one by Monday.

"It's obscene to treat [employees] who put their lives on the line for us like they're disposable commodities," she said.

Vicenik and Pelletier said layoffs will mean fewer police officers on the street.

Gordin worried about spreading the department too thin.

"If we have stopped a speeder on Roosevelt Road, and a case of road rage somewhere else, and a problem in the shopping center, and then we get another emergency call," he said. "Which situation do we neglect? When will we not be able to respond?"

At the Broadview Bowl on South 17th Avenue, general manager Blake Prokopec praised the police response to calls in the past.

"People know that Broadview is not a place where you can get out of line," Prokopec said. "But it won't take long to get a bad reputation. ... That would absolutely kill us."

The effect of losing firefighters is harder to predict, said Vicenik.

The fire station will continue to be staffed at all times, and mutual-aid arrangements with nearby suburbs will remain in effect, he said.

Also getting layoff notices were two of the four Building Department employees; five of the nine Public Works employees; and 12 others who work in support roles, such as secretaries in various departments.